Wednesday, 18 December 2013

Titanic

I made another pointless circuit of the corridors. There's nowhere to go and no way out. I went to the toilet to throw up, and I thought I saw a snake disappearing down the pipe when I lifted the lid. I didn't, of course. There aren't any snakes here. It doesn't stop me catching glimpses of them.

I went back to my old lab. The scientists there were working to fix the map. They're like the band playing as the Titanic sank. At least music has intrinsic value.

I helped them twist in a few bulbs and replace a circuit board in the control panel. The map is a mixture of comprehensible parts and some black boxes they were told not to tamper with. I know why, and I said they shouldn't open them now, as it wouldn't help make the map work. We concentrated on the parts we could fix, and on routing as much power through the map as we could. They let me flip the switch.

The map went bang. Before it did, it lit up. It showed that The Sick Land had expanded enormously. The facility was now in the Yellow, and the Green stretched halfway into the nearest city. They shook their heads and started changing the burned-out components. They told me it couldn't have been working properly. I'm not so sure. The Yellow seems about right.

There was a fox in my room when I got back. I saw the white tip of its tail disappear as I opened the door. I couldn't find it, though. I spent an hour throwing up blood.

When I changed to go to bed, I noticed the skin above my left leg was starting to slough away.